Your tax dollars at work: Viagra for rapists

What do you get when you commit sex offenses against a two-year-old child? Free Viagra from the government:

Scores of convicted rapists and other high-risk sex offenders in New York have been getting Viagra paid by Medicaid for the last five years, the state's comptroller said Sunday. Audits by Comptroller Alan Hevesi's office showed that between January 2000 and March 2005, 198 sex offenders in New York received Medicaid-reimbursed Viagra after their convictions. Those included crimes against children as young as 2 years old, he said. Hevesi asked Michael Leavitt, secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, in a letter Sunday to "take immediate action to ensure that sex offenders do not receive erectile dysfunction medication paid for by taxpayers."

In other shocking news, I actually agree with Chuck Schumer on something:

Sen Schumer said: "It is just mind-boggling to think that Level 3 sexual offenders can get Viagra, which may indeed help them perpetrate other horrible crimes. "And what we know about Level 3 offenders is this: They almost never change. They're almost never rehabilitated."

And yet, they're routinely released.